My dreams are filled with dead people

[chani]

Does it mean they still exist somewhere because I dream of them? Dreams can be screens too...

Once upon atime the poet Jules Supervielle wrote his most famous short story, L' Enfant de la Haute Mer (The Child of the High Sea). It's the tale of a little girl stuck in a weird village in between lands and oceans. Alone she keeps walking along the unique street of that lost town, trying to find another soul or to move forward the hand of a frozen clock. One day she even tries to drown herself in the sea but the wave throws her back in the ghost-town.

The last paragraph of the tale gives the key of the spell. It's tragic and beautiful.

"Marins qui rêvez en haute mer, les coudes appuyés sur la lisse, craignez de penser longtemps dans le noir de la nuit à un visage aimé. Vous risqueriez de donner naissance, dans des lieux essentiellement désertiques, à un être doué de toute la sensibilité humaine et qui ne peut pas vivre ni mourir, ni aimer, et souffre pourtant comme s'il vivait, aimait et se trouvait toujours sur le point de mourir, un être infiniment déshérité dans les solitudes aquatiques, comme cette enfant de l'Océan, née un jour du cerveau de Charles Liévens, de Steenvoorde, matelot de pont du quatre-mâts "Le Hardi", qui avait perdu sa fille âgée de douze ans, pendant un de ses voyages,et, une nuit, par 55 degrés de latitude Nord et 35 de longitude Ouest, pensa longuement à elle, avec une force terrible, pour le grand malheur de cette enfant."

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Tragic indeed.

I dream so much. Maybe it even affects the living. One wonders what they do when you aren't there. Maybe they do as you dream.

It also reminds me of a story in which characters from novels become alive when people read the novels and "believe" in them.
And also Pirandello: "Six Characters in Search of an Author"

Whatever you write, dream, think, seems to exist -- in a way.

(and did you notice the sailors last name...)

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Yes I did! And I knew you would reply (also because you might be the only one who can read French!)!

There's a short story by J-Luis Borges, "The Circular Ruins" that deals with a similar idea. Yous hould read it, it's wonderful.

Supervielle was born in Uruguay and I think he kept a kind of South American way to tell fantastic stories.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if I ever read something by Borges. I remember reading a book by a Portuguese (?) author about everyone in a city becoming blind. But, darn, what was his name again...

South-Americans do have a very specific way of bringing the fantastic into their stories. It seeps in as a tragic component, a somewhat strange occurence that puts your whole world view upside down -- but still you consider it as reality at that point, it is real in the book.

I think you can find this as well in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. So maybe it isn't typical South-American after all.
And of course in the graphic novels of Schuiten en Peeters: Les cités obscures.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Jorge Luis Borges is my favourite author! He was blind and was Argentinian. He published many essays on literature but also poems and tales. You could give a try to his short stories. I recommend those in "Fictions" or in "The Aleph".

[poshcat.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure it was very tragic. The most tragic part being that I can't read French. :0D

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

You should learn it!

Don't you live in a country where French is an official language? ;- P

But I forgive you and still love you Poshinette *licks*

[paranoid-blonde.livejournal.com]

woah...tragique!

*thinks long and hard*

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. And sad.

I'll be careful with my dreams from now on.

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

So that dream I had the other night... that poor policeman.

Or was it I? *ponders the mysteries*